Teaching East Asian Music in the Elementary Classroom

Lesson Plans from 2005 Workshop

“Yu Guang Guang (Moonlight Lullaby
(Fourth Grade, 50 minutes)

Teacher: Lisa Voss

Japan

Materials:

Venn Diagram
CD Player
Copies of “Yu Guang Guang” for each child in the class.
Overhead copies of “Yu Guang Guang,” and “Goodnight, My Angel.”
Colored pencils
World Map

Resources:

“Goodnight, My Angel” -- ISBN: 0439553768

(http://www.geocities.com/fannysdesigns/lullabye.html)

“ Grandma Lai Goon remembers : a Chinese-American family story” -- ISBN: 0761323147
The Music Connection: Bridges to Asia (Book and CD)/ Intermediate Level, Silver Burdett Ginn

Objective:

Sing a song using the Cantonese language
Identify syncopated rhythms
Compare and contrast two different lullabies
Identify a melodic extension

Procedure:

Ask the children to describe the purpose of a lullaby.
Brainstorm some words that might be found in a lullaby.
Present the words to the songs “Yu Guang Guang,” and Billy Joel's “Goodnight, My Angel.”
Using a Venn Diagram, compare and contrast the lyrics to the two lullabies.
Listen to the CD “Goodnight, My Angel” that comes with the book and let the children enjoy the beautiful illustrations done by Yvonne Gilbert.
Listen to the song, “Yu Guang Guang.”
Talk about the differences found in the music. Add these ideas to the Venn Diagram.
Focus on “Yu Guang Guang.” Hand out copies of the song to each child.
Teach the pronunciation for the song. Sing with the CD.
Locate China on the map.
Have the students locate Guangzhou, the capital of the Guangdong province, and Hong Kong on the map.
“Cantonese is the dialect spoken in the southern part of the People's Republic of China and gets its name from ‘ Canton,' the old name of the city now known as Guangzhou.” (Music Connection: Bridges to Asia, 21) Read how a Chinese-American grandmother relates family and cultural history from her life in Guangzhou, China to her grandchildren.
- Grandma Lai Goon remembers: a Chinese-American family story / Ann Morris ; photographs and illustrations by Peter Linenthal.
Using a colored pencil, find the phrases in “Yu Guang Guang.” (Warning: One of the phrases will be longer than the others.) Play the song and have them move to the music to try to distinguish between the long and short phrases.
Explain the term: melodic extension. The song seems to pause between phrases 1 and 2, but at the end of line 3, there is not a pause, making this phrase longer than the others.
Write a syncopated rhythm pattern on the board (syn-co-pa). Define this as an example of syncopation. Have the students take their colored pencils and circle all of the syncopated patterns in the song. (4 times, in measures 3,5,6, and 7)
Introduce the pentatonic scale: Do (Eb), Re (F), Mi (G), So (Bb), La (C)
Have the students play a syncopated rhythm on each of these pitches.
Have the students improvise with the pentatonic scale along with the CD. Have one student play the gong at the end of each phrase.

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